The boys are on a mission: return "The Lord of the Rings" to the Two Towers Video Store in Conifer. But this is no ordinary copy. Butters, the evil sixth graders, and the boys' parents all try to steal the ring, er tape, from the boys. Will they succeed?

Matt Roush

Frederic M. Biddle

Unlike many cartoons, this one actually looks funny, and it constantly plays on its grade-school aesthetic for shock value, with great success. At its best, "South Park" is more a profane "Peanuts" than a downsized "Beavis and Butt-head." [13 Aug 1997]

Eric Mink

If all "South Park" offered were poo-poo jokes and babes spouting profanity, the show would wear thin awfully fast. It doesn't. The reason is that Parker, Stone and their collaborators actually have done something remarkable with their primitive, construction-paper animation: They have created a wholly new, internally consistent fictional world and have peopled it with distinct, interesting characters. [13 Aug 1997]

Chris Vognar

South Park is either the funniest new show on the air or the next sign of the apocalypse. ... When it's not in gross-out mode, and often even when it is, South Park is weaving a surrealist satire of small-town America. [11 Aug 1997]

Brian Lowry

Blatantly designed to tickle the funny bones of teenage boys and those who think like them, the show delivers plenty of lowbrow laughs, at the same time indulging in excesses seemingly calculated to shock the sensibilities of TV watchdogs. [13 Aug 1997]

Marvin Kitman

The important thing about "South Park" is not what it looks like or the way the characters talk, but what they say. It's a writer-driven vehicle, like most of the better twisted adult cartoons. [13 Aug 1997]